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"To preserve liberty, it
is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and
be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." (Richard
Henry Lee, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, initiator of
the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which
passed the Bill
of Rights.)
Samuel Adams, a
handgun owner who pressed for an
amendment stating that the "Constitution shall never be construed . . .
to prevent the people of the
United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms,"
would be shocked to hear
that his native state today imposes a year's sentence, without
probation or parole, for carrying a
firearm without a police permit..
"The great
object is that every man be armed . . . Everyone who is able may have a
gun."(Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on
the ratification of the Constitution.)
"The advantage of being
armed . . . the Americans possess over the people of all other nations
. . . Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several
Kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources
will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
(James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights,
in his Federalist Paper No. 26.)
The proposal
finally passed the House in its present form: "A well regulated
militia, being
necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to
keep and bear arms, shall not be
infringed.:" In this form it was submitted into the Senate, which
passed it the following day. The
Senate in the process indicated its intent that the right be an
individual one, for private purposes, by
rejecting an amendment which would have limited the keeping and bearing
of arms to bearing "For
the common defense".
"There can be
little doubt from this that when the Congress and the people spoke of a
"militia", they
had reference to the traditional concept of the entire populace capable
of bearing arms, and not to
any formal group such as what is today called the National Guard. The
purpose was to create an
armed citizenry... considered essential to ward off tyranny."
This
content from Orrin Hatch's preface to a 1982 Senate Judiciary
report on the THE
RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. I think this a fine stand alone
source document for anyone (pro or con) thinking about whys and
wherefores of the Second Amendment. Sadly, and I do mean sadly,
we have entered an era where government leaders, including the
Judiciary, simply do not care what the Superstition's and Bill of
Rights
demand of them. Screw them; the founding documents are still the
bible of the free people we are, barely still. Which is what the Second
Amendment exists.
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A timely reminder from R.W. Forsythe
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